Some Gaston Co. Schools payroll issues fixed, others still in progress, officials say

GASTONIA, N.C. (WBTV) - Gaston County Schools employees heard from the district’s finance superintendent about payroll issues the district has been dealing with for 14 months.

In that update during Monday night’s board of education meeting, district officials said they’ve corrected outstanding global payroll issues dealing with deductions, overtime pay and longevity pay.

Issues with retirement contributions, multiple deductions and comp time pay rate were listed as still progressing.

Gary Hoskins, the assistant superintendent of finance for Gaston County Schools, provided the board with individual updates on each of those existing global payroll issues.

As to retirement contributions, Hoskins said North Carolina State Retirement files have been posted through November and staff are working on the next three months. He added they will be submitting those as soon as possible.

“We’ve got two payrolls to run this week and as soon as those payrolls are run, we’ll be focusing on that,” Hoskins said during the meeting.

The Empower 401(k) is current and posted through February, while all other retirement plans 457 and 403(b) are current and posted through February, according to Hoskins.

He said the multiple deductions continues to be “one of the most challenging to address.”

“Even though it was caused by a global issue, we have to resolve it on an individual basis on a lot of these,” Hoskins told the board.

A slide shown during his update stated that a number of employees had excess deductions taken from their checks in prior pay periods. Staff is said to be working to identify and refund those deductions.

“We have made solid progress, but there are still a number of outstanding deductions to refund,” a slide stated.

For comp time pay rate, the system is currently using the employee’s pay rate at the time when comp time is earned. Hoskins noted in his presentation the system should be using the pay rate at the time when comp time is used.

He said they are working to correct it to the current pay rate and to make up the difference between the old pay rate and the current pay rate, so individuals are reimbursed.

Hoskins said there are individual issues they are still catching up on, such as incorrect deductions, overpayments, comp time pay rate, retirement contributions and leave balance accrual.

According to the presentation, 1,834 incidents were reported between January and September of 2022. Approximately 962 employees met with the customer care team in October of last year, and 499 issues were resolved from November to mid-March. There were 463 employee folders said to still be remaining.

“That’s still too high, obviously,” Hoskins said.

Another issue the district has dealt with is several school employees receiving tax forms containing errors.

The problems all started when Gaston County Schools switched to a new payroll system known as Oracle.

“The stability of the system is still a concern of mine, so when we have a good pay run, I’m still not quite confident that that’s going to happen every single time,” Hoskins said.

WBTV reached out to the North Carolina Association of Educators. They said in part:

“Employees are increasingly frustrated by this and many excellent educators, young educators have left the district or teaching altogether as a result of this. In a time where fewer and fewer people are entering the education field, this payroll crisis has been detrimental to our district, most importantly to our students.”

WBTV reported last week that the North Carolina Association of Educators filed a lawsuit against the Gaston County Board of Education on behalf of teachers.

The lawsuit seeks $25,000 in monetary damages for overpaying, underpaying and missed paychecks by the school district.

Copyright 2023 WBTV. All rights reserved.